State and federal agencies informed an interstate commission that no violations of environmental law appeared to occur in the sale of a Pennsylvania nuclear plant that would require them to step in on the matter, a spokesperson for the commission said this week.
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PDEP), there were “no discrepancies or violations” in the license transfer of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 2 reactor from FirstEnergy to EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions, a spokesperson for the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) told RadWaste Monitor in an email Thursday.
“We did not learn of anything that would require an action by SRBC,” the spokesperson said, citing email exchanges with PDEP and NRC.
The interstate commission alongside PDEP have been looking into allegations made by nuclear watchdog Three Mile Island Alert that the sale of Three Mile Island violated a certification rule within the Clean Water Act.
Eric Epstein, Three Mile Island Alert’s chair, accused FirstEnergy and TMI-2 Solutions in February of not getting permission from proper state and interstate authorities to ignore water quality standards when decommissioning Three Mile Island, which would have run afoul of the certification rule.
PDEP did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor. A spokesman for PDEP told the Monitor in February that his agency was “actively engaging in discussions” with TMI-2 Solutions.
Meanwhile, NRC on June 22 rejected Three Mile Island Alert’s agency-level motion to halt the license transfer for the Dauphin County, Pa. nuclear plant.
In a split decision, the commission tossed the group’s motion on procedural grounds, saying it “lacked jurisdiction” to make a decision because the plant’s sale had already closed. The commission also noted its view that the sale hadn’t violated environmental law.
Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor has been offline since 1974, after a partial core meltdown that remains one of the worst civil-nuclear incidents in history. EnergySolutions in 2019 announced its intention to purchase the reactor from FirstEnergy for decommissioning.
